As much as I dislike their products, if Apple goes after the Wii with stong iTunes and iPhone/Pod integration, as a gaming and convergence device, they could
hurt Nintendo. The saturated market isn't an issue when you can lower the standard of definition and quadruple the market space (e.g. the "smartphone" market).
They will probably have to kill Apple TV, though.

To me it seems pretty clear what they want is to dominate casual gaming the way they are starting to in the handheld space (yes I know they are still a long ways behind Nintendo, but there are a LOT of games targeting the iPhone/Touch now).

In order to do that all that is needed is to add some light gaming abilities and controls to the AppleTV. Perhaps it would not look much like what they have today, but I see AppleTV being the core from which they extend into gaming.

I never did think they would do a console before as I thought it made no sense, but seeing as how almost all the games I purchase on consoles now are online smaller games I can see it working. With other consoles still focusing on larger games as a focus Apple could really sweep up the smaller game category. Heck, all they'd have to do is court all of the indie game competition winners going back a few years and they'd have a hell of a system.

1. Increased resolution, up from 720p (Apple is good at this now on the Core2Duo mini, so the barriers are gone)2. Blu-Ray disk support (or however the hell that's abbreviated, sorry (plus, I only *think* Wii doesn't have this and XBox does - I'm no gamer, so I don't know)3. Netflix support? Check out the Samsung BD-P1600 to see the integration referred to....4. If #3, then also maybe a similar rental deal with those guys that advertise games like Netflix5. Certainly

"When asked during the EMI conference call about the potential of lifting DRM from video, Jobs said: "Video is pretty different from music right now because the video industry does not distribute 90 percent of their content DRM free. Never has. So I think they are in a pretty different situation and I wouldn't hold it to a parallel at all."

I agree that the patents are probably just different ideas, and if anything are more related to Touch/iPhone development.

But it would not take much money for Apple to enter the gaming market if as I said they went for casual gaming only. There's no need for physical media. There's no need to do anything other than what they are doing with the AppleTV already, apart from open up a new section of the store for AppleTV games. The system already has full OpenGL support and OS X underneath. Being casual game

The only trick would be convincing game developers to write anything for a platform with fewer users.

You should definitely read this [joystiq.com] then. The rumor on the street is that Apple might buy EA. Now, I know better than to listen to these types of rumors, but if that did happen, they would suddenly have a lot of games being written for them. Who knows if this is true or not, but it is makes a hell of a lot more sense than Apple buying Twitter of all things.

The problem with Apple entering that market: price. One of Nintendo's biggest selling points is their price. If Apple continues with their buy-in-club pricing mentality (and we have no reason to believe that they won't), then I highly doubt Nintendo has much to worry about.

That's the handheld market however. The DS is pretty much the only handheld(does the PSP still count?) And the iphone is also a cell phone, so the comparision isn't as good.

The console market has plenty of other consoles to choose from. People looking for a cheap system that is fun will go with the Wii still, hardcore gamers will go for the consoles that have the games on them and a proven track record. Mac cultists will buy anything with an apple on it however. If they release a console, I think it w

You guys are about to learn what I learned 10 years ago: Discrete devices work best. A dedicated gaming platform will have better performance, better form factor, and better battery life than a device that's a million things and also a gaming platform. A dedicated music device will have better form factor and better battery life than a device that's a million things and also a music device. A dedicated phone will have better form factor and better battery life than something that's a million things and a phone.

And you know what? When my DS is dead, I'll still be able to call a taxi, and I'll still have 11 hours of music left on my iPod.

Agreed. However, in a console, media integration is now a plus. People like being able to listen to their own music while playing a game. Dorm room gamers may not have the money or space to throw in a second DVD player. Some integration is bound to take place as things progress. I'll agree that trying to add more features that make you console just an underpowered computer is kinda nuts, and I'll never carry around just one thing for gaming and phone use as that's just stupid.

I hear you. But I don't like walking around looking like I'm wearing jodhpurs, either. A little convergence goes a long way: putting an mp3 player into my phone (a G1) - or rather, putting an acceptable interface around my phone's ability to play mp3s, is one less device I have to carry around. Add Bluetooth stereo headphones, that's one less wire.

You aren't wrong. Thing is, it's more an issue of what sells best. or more accurately, what most people think works best for them. I remember how Palm was extolled for not trying to do much more than be a PDA; "who needs a computer that small," was a common objection. But the truth is, people will always want to do more if it's set out in an easy fashion for them. A decade later, PalmOS - in code base and system design philosophy - is dead, and for all its flaws, Windows CE is still around.

You guys are about to learn what I learned 10 years ago: Discrete devices work best.

That is true, and that is what geeks prefer. I preferred that myself once.

But you are soon to learn a more powerful truth. That the general populace prefers convergence when it works. "Normal" people (and I use that term neutrally, not implying anything wrong with being abnormal!) do not want to have two or three devices to charge if possible. These people will happily sacrifice a few things to carry less and not become The Batman.

The cycle is that you have a dedicated device until the general devices get powerful enough to absorb the specific.

This is true of course primarily in the mobile space, for fixed location devices I think people will generally either prefer or have neutral preferences on quality devices that do one thing well (like using a receiver vs. having an all-in-one entertainment system). But when carrying stuff space and weight are all premiums that people will sacrifice a lot to improve - not just true in electronics ether, just look at hiking gear...

As an owner ($200 refurb, what the hell) I have to say I'd be fine if they killed it. I'd be happier if they just fixed it though, and it really doesn't need much work.

All it needs is an external DVD player, like the one from the Air, and an external tuner (w/CableCard). Plug them in via the USB2, pass through the video, and suddenly it becomes one bazillion times more useful. I get one little stack, plug it into my TV/monitor on one end and tuner on the

I think you're right. I'm not usually tempted by Apple products, but I would actually get excited by this.

The reason I'm not a fan of their PCs/laptops is that I don't like the concept of proprietary sealed-unit computers. The reason that I don't like their handheld devices is that I feel a lot of the features (casual gaming, novelty apps, gigantic data storage) would be wasted on me. The reason I don't like all Apple products is that they're usually overpriced.

More likely that Apple discovers how dominant that Nintendo is in this market. Just because Apple is the gleam in every fanboy's eyes and just because iTunes is the most successful music distribution system doesn't mean they are going to hold a candle to Nintendo when it comes to a game system with an online distribution system for games. Nintendo's been doing it a lot longer and is making a profit while doing so. This gaming device, if handheld, would have to battle the DS for supremecy in this market.

No, it does better than expected as a niche product [wikipedia.org]. Still, I suspect a PVR+iTunes frontend+Gaming platform with strong iPod tie ins and in HD would sell very well. It would be a major initiative, and I doubt Apple would let a "hobby project" dilute that market.

One of the most underutilized - but most fun - options on the original Xbox was the ability of certain games (especially the Tony Hawk series) to replace the default "in-game" music with music ripped from CD's. Make a custom CD with your own chosen playlist, drop it on the box, and boom, you had a completely different experience. I couldn't stand half of the crap-rap they put in, for instance, but I could tell it "never play" those songs, and add in, say, a bunch of Frank Sinatra to the list, or pretty much anything else I decided to put in.

I wish more games had that option. It's one thing if you have a cutscene with dedicated music or something, but something else for sports games or games that wind up trying to have a "top 40s" playlist stuck in as an afterthought. I know I, personally, get bored with games quicker if I don't like the music that's being blared.

Actually... one thing really cool about the Xbox 360 is that if you are playing your own music (either from the hard disk, from a PC via Media Center, or from an MP3 player connected via USB) it will override the soundtrack of whatever game you are playing. But you still get all of the other game sounds (voices, sound effects, etc.).

Without that feature, I think 'Burnout: Paradise' would have driven me insane.

As the other poster noted, the sales are actually better than you'd expect for a niche product.

But the thing you are not considering is that many people use mac minis as home theater systems. They are not technically counted as "AppleTV" units but it has the same effect - people buy a lot of media from iTunes, and many use the same FrontRow software (though many others use things like Boxee).

"But the thing you are not considering is that many people use mac minis as home theater systems."

I was wanting to use a mac mini, as a front end to my MythTv system, but, from what I understand, they aren't powerful enough to play full HD content?

:(

I'm finally about to turn my myth system to a full client/server setup with separate big backend in my office, and running ethernet cable around the house to smaller frontend boxes by each tv/projector. I've not yet settled on what to use for front ends, but

I was wanting to use a mac mini, as a front end to my MythTV system, but, from what I understand, they aren't powerful enough to play full HD content?

I can play 1080p content on my original Intel Mac mini - using a faster external HD is the key (as is using VLC for playback).

The newer mac minis are more than fast enough, even just using Quicktime (and I think the internal drive is faster now, but still just a laptop drive so an external FW800 drive would make a good addition)..

Check out the newest MacMinis. If they have an Nvidia 9xxx integrated video they would make great MythTV systems. I currently run Mythbuntu with the avenard.org repo. Jean-Yves has backported the VDPAU acceleration into the stable Myth series. Using a supported Nvidia card and VDPAU lets you offload video decode to the video card. It takes almost no CPU to decode Blu-Ray rips with this setup. High bitrate 1080p barely touches the CPU. On the MythTv users list there has been discussion of upcoming Nvidia ION

Well, I'm skeptical too, and I remember the Pippin. But I also remember the Newton, and every time I see an iPhone or iPod Touch, I think of the Newton. Apple seems to be able to go back to the drawing board and turn a failure into a success in the next generation or two.

That said, I think that they would be entering a rather full market. Who would they displace?

They'd probably displace Sony. They have the worst performing console; Nintendo has the best. They'll be competing for sales from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft; some people buy everything, but some will make a decision and follow a trade-off. Given that more Wiis get bought than anything else, it's most unlikely that such a trade-off will cut a Wii (rather, they will give up the Apple shiny thing in favor of the Wii, or have 2 consoles and give up the non-Wii console). Given that fewer Playstation 3s ge

Sigh... in the not-so-distant past, when the Slashdot community was oriented around open vs. proprietary discussions, Microsoft and Apple very much WAS considered to occupy the same basic space.

These days Slashdot is all about piracy, fads and rumors in social networking sites, and discussions about marketing. The occasional GPL vs. BSD/MIT/Apache flamewar still sprouts up, but mostly it's just fanboys praising or bad-mouthing various shiny objects on the basis of how "sexy" they are.

Apple sells "better" stuff, Microsoft sells "more" stuff. Other than that, yeah... they are pretty much the same thing.

Actually, you can also play your own music in games on your Xbox, and Xbox Live has an online store for games and videos. Other than a multi-touch interface (Nintendo DS's turf), what is Apple doing new besides combining these and putting their logo on it?

Sounds like an a shiny opengl xbox that will most likely cost more...that will cost money every time they update the firmware.
They can't get a very good game support on their PCs, and they intend to get support from developers on this? Highly unlikely...

You can use C++! The user-interface must be programmed with Objective C.

Assuming that you just want an OpenGL view where you can throw in your game graphics, you just need to set up an App delegate, a view controller and a view. One of the standard templates gives you everything you need on the objective C side.

You can use C++! The user-interface must be programmed with Objective C.

That's a pretty big hurdle... but not insurmountable

Assuming that you just want an OpenGL view where you can throw in your game graphics, you just need to set up an App delegate, a view controller and a view. One of the standard templates gives you everything you need on the objective C side.

Argh, why do I have to look at a templatein Objective C. Presumably, "fill a window with Op

"Template" in this case may be a poorly-chosen word. It doesn't mean C++ style template, it's more like "Pick from this list the category of app you want to write. Okay, now here's a whole bunch of boilerplate code with 98% of the framework calls you'd have to write already made for you." Then you essentially, yes, just write your OpenGL code (plain C is legal Obj-C), change some arguments in those framework calls, and compile!

Obj-C, btw, isn't too hard to pick up. It only adds one major syntactical feat

It's not that simple. The view is pretty complex in games. The controller has to include networking, file i/o, actually controller input and mapping to a unique internal method.

Physics, AI, and map decoding go in the model so that they're identical across platforms

Nice if true, but it's not. Different chipsets (x64, x86 and PowerPC) all require tweaks to the underlying math libraries to optimize performance. Sometimes those tweaks propogate up.

only part of the view and controller need to be written in Objective-C.

Without knowing exactly the dividing line, I can say that those components are pretty complicated. So why should we have to use Objective-C at all? Why should I have to have some other language anywhere in my build?

XNA on Xbox 360, on the other hand, needs games to be ported to the CLR.

That would work if you can turn off the game's music, and if you can set up your stereo to mix the Xbox 360 and music source so that you don't miss world cues that the game presents through sound effects. I doubt that the median console owner can figure out the latter.

Perhaps they are planning to offer these types of features in their current iPhone/iPod Touch products? Then allow developers access to the framework in some future firmware update? They could also be planning to move games into their own section on iTunes, as they are selling better than other apps. Most of this stuff already fits their existing hardware anyhow, so I'm not seeing how this leads to a new gaming console.

An Apple iWhy? I don't know HOW they do it, but they just keep on surprising me with their intuitive design!

"It's a total waste of your monÃh; the iWhy? Never again was it so easy to just ask yourself why the hell you paid for the latest incarnation from Apple... again! Something ofcourse that's not so easy for the PC, but to hell with it! PC's suck at everything and not just at wasting time alone. Redmond start your photocopiers! Oh it was actually a joke but they took it quite seriously. Let's have a

While things work fine for the casual market, for deeper and more complex games that the hardcore crowd will actually want they are going to have to add some buttons. Though its great not having a stylus to loose, the type of screen the current iPhone and Touch use is simply not accurate enough for heavy gaming. The gyros are nice but games that use them are mostly a one trick pony so far. I know Apple is all about slick and elegant but practical would do them alot of good. I'd love to see the iPhone/Touch as a viable gaming platfom, its specs are better than any handheld on the market but its interface cripples it.

Except that gamers, will pay Â£30-40 for a game and will keep coming back for more [gamasutra.com]. So not only do you need to ship 3x as many copies in a much more saturated market, but you also don't have a userbase ready to buy v2,3,4 at the drop of a pin.

Depth and complexity are entirely different things, and the attempt to tie them together has driven more people away from gaming than quite possibly any other aspect of the downhill slide gaming has suffered from over the last ten years.

Depth is good, but can and should be achieved without gratuitous complexity. Fortunately, it's been done many times throughout the history of gaming, video and otherwise, so there are plenty of examples from which one can draw inspiration. It's just a matter of letting go of

I'd say it is more that some players enjoy the greater complexity, and many of those players are the sorts of people who go into game development.

Some people get a big mental reward from being presented with a difficult thing, mastering it, and then using it. It's like racing with an automatic versus a stick. Automatic drivers would be people like you, who want to enjoy the depth of driving without having to master complex controls to do it (put gas to go, point car at destination - then let the course prov

Consider dual wielding two Wii-like controllers, and give them buttons as well. Your swinging becomes the blades of your toon, your left thumb button becomes movement, right thumb button jump. A trigger on one hand becomes the camera and a trigger on the other has special contextual functions.

You become a dual-wielding jedi knight -- just move your mom's vase out of the room.

Many people [citation needed] use Windows solely because it's how they play their games. With the excuse of "I can't play cool games on a Mac" gone, those "slaves to the game" Windows users will have no excuse, and will switch to Mac.

Except that absolutely isn't the only reason PC gamers don't use Macs.

Macs are overpriced for the components they have and are almost completely uncustomizable. Obviously the very similar hardware that they all run on is good for the average user who just wants to play a simple game, but for actual gamers it's not as good.

When I can build a Mac from scratch and not have to spend a bazillion dollars on everything, I'll CONSIDER switching... until then the PC gives me the customizability that I wan

I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. I don't know the gamers you hang around, but go to ANY large LAN party and you'll find that the majority of the people there built or at least added parts to their PCs. Th

OSX to run games because they will run better do to how it manages memory and devices. You get more performance out of a slower chip.

Ok I was following you until this. If anything OSX adds overhead and makes games and the like run slower. Especially due to the way it manages memory. The upside is that the OS itself is fairly robust.

Being able to play a game on an iPhone or Apple game console isn't exactly the same thing as sitting down in front of my computer and playing the games I want to play.

It doesn't matter if I can play specific games on Apple hardware, what matters is if I can play the games I want to play. Right now I'm into things like Team Fortress 2 and Far Cry 2, and hopefully Empire: Total War once they get the bugs out. If I can't play TF2 or whatever else I specifically want to play, then it doesn't matter what other

I think convergence is what's is prompting this. Imagine making the iPhone/iPod Touch a portable gaming console. Remember when we used to carry a cell phone, iPod and DS? Millions of you already have Apple's gaming device in your hand. I can't see any sense in Apple coming out with a dedicated gaming device.

Also, I was browsing the AppStore last night and noticed a couple of games that were previously only on the Nintendo DS (Cooking Mama being one). The graphics/gameplay were identical if not better.

After the disaster that was Pippin, I very much doubt that Apple will be going into that business again. Steve Jobs' animosity toward computer gaming is well-documented, and it is unlikely that he would about-face on something like this, as he would have to have done back when this project started.

More likely, this is an extension of the Apple TV into a more full-fledged set-top PC. Jobs hates games, but he's learned the hard way that games sell computers, so of course he's going to have Apple put some thought into the interface. But this will not be marketed as a game console, and ultimately it will not compete with game consoles.

On the other hand, it's good to see that they're leaning towards Wiimote-like gesture-based control as opposed to 1:1 motion mapping. It's the best of both worlds: the abstraction of buttons alongside the immersion of motion.

I was about to dismiss it as unsubstantiated speculation, but I just saw an article claiming that Apple may want to acquire EA [tgdaily.com]. That would fit in VERY nicely with designing their own game console, which I imagine would replace AppleTV.

Wow. Apple buying Twitter would be silly, but Apple buying EA could totally change the landscape.

having your personal music integrated into a title, a 'natural' gesture multitouch interface, and a single online store that sells games, media, and video."

Ok so first, didn't apple learn it's lesson already about trying to patent 'touchy-feely' terms? What the hell does "'natural' gesture multitouch interface" mean? Touchin my PS3 button feels natural. I just move my finger over the button. It's not a touch screen, but that is the byproduct of my TV not being touch-screen...unless they are trying to do stuff via the same technology in the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report

Apple signs exclusivity deals for a few major video game publishers' games that it thinks are good enough to be system sellers for the iPod Touch. Then Apple enters into a co-promotion agreement with the publishers that includes "only on iPhone and iPod Touch" branding in advertisements, just like some DS games' commercials say "only on DS".

Nintendo already does most of this. Combination game console, picture sharing, voice communication with anyone in the world, surf the net, buy stuff from their online store, everything organized in "channels", a natural interface that supports gestures, and (until the last update, which removed mp3 support) you could play your own music for some titles. So - Wii combined game/media/internet console FTW.

Something seems incredibly interesting about the prospect of a game console with an iPhone like app/game store. I could definitely see myself buying one if they do come out, especially if I could easily program my own games for it.

Given that the app store for the iPod Touch uses almost the same business model as the "Community Games" store for the Xbox 360, I'd recommend that you buy an Xbox 360. Like the iPod Touch, the Xbox 360 needs a specific host operating system (Windows) to run the developer tools, and running your code on the console requires a $100/year developer certificate.